Hitoshi Nishikori, Inagi-Shi JP

Hitoshi Nishikori, Inagi-Shi JP

Patent application number

Description

Published

20080252675

PRINTING APPARATUS AND THE METHOD OF ACQUIRING CORRECTION VALUE OF CONVEYING ERROR - While a conveying error of a roller depends on the eccentricity of the roller, the amount and the state of the eccentricity sometimes makes the roller have different conveying errors from one point in the longitudinal direction of the roller to another. There is provided a construction for obtaining a correction value that is suitable for the correction of the conveying error even in such a case as described above. To this end, plural test patterns are formed in the longitudinal direction of the roller. Then, a suitable correction value for correcting the conveying error that depends on the eccentricity of the roller is obtained on the basis of these test patterns.

10-16-2008

20080252676

PRINTING APPARATUS AND METHOD OF ACQUIRING CORRECTION VALUE OF CONVEYING ERROR - The sequence of the acquisition of a correction value of a conveying error depending on the eccentricity of the conveying roller (correction value for eccentricity) and the acquisition of a correction value of a conveying error depending on the outer diameter of the roller (correction value for outer diameter) is considered to acquire a precise correction value for outer diameter. A test pattern to acquire the correction values for eccentricity and for outer diameter is formed with an area exceeds the area corresponding to an integer multiple of the circumferential length of the roller. The correction value for eccentricity and that for outer diameter are acquired in this sequence. The fluctuation in the conveying error is reduced by the application of the correction value for eccentricity, and the influence of the excess area is made smaller before the correction value for outer diameter is acquired by averaging the conveying errors.

10-16-2008

20080252677

PRINTING APPARATUS AND CONVEYING CONTROL METHOD - Provided are a printing apparatus and a conveying-error controlling method capable of printing a high-quality image by correction reflecting the conveying amount of a printing medium. A provided inkjet printing apparatus prints images by printing scans for actual printing and by conveying the printing medium with a roller orthogonally to the printing-scan direction. In each printing scan, the printing medium is scanned with a print head having an array of nozzles from which the ink is ejected. The print head moving direction differs from the arranging direction of the nozzles in the array. The apparatus includes a conveying controller to control the conveying of the printing medium on the basis of a correction value used to correct a conveying error of the roller. The conveying controller changes the correction value to be applied in accordance with the conveying amount of the printing medium between two scans with the print head.

10-16-2008

20080252710

SHEET CONVEYING APPARATUS, PRINTING APPARATUS, CORRECTION INFORMATION ACQUIRING APPARATUS, PRINTING SYSTEM, METHOD OF CONVEYING SHEETS AND METHOD OF ACQUIRING CORRECTION INFORMATION - Performed is conveying-error correction in accordance with the kind and the number of rollers that are actually involved in the conveying of a printing medium. Each of the rollers that are potentially involved in the conveying of the printing medium has a unique amount of eccentricity, and may affect the quality of image to be printed in a peculiar manner. To address this problem, a surface of the printing medium is divided into areas according to the number and the combination of the rollers that are actually involved in the conveying. A pattern each is printed for each of the areas thus formed while the pattern enables the detection of the conveying error. A correction value to correct the conveying error is calculated using each of the patterns. The correction values thus obtained are reflected in the conveying of the printing medium.

10-16-2008

20080266348

PRINTING APPARATUS - The present invention aims to obtain preferable correction values to correct the conveying error of a conveying roller in accordance with the size of a printing medium, even when the conveying error caused by the eccentricity of the roller varies from a point to another in the longitudinal direction of a roller, depending on the amount and the state of eccentricity of the roller. To achieve this object, correction values are acquired using the whole part of or only a part of plural test patterns formed in the longitudinal direction of the roller. The correction values thus acquired correspond to the respective zones where the test patterns are formed.

10-30-2008

20100189481

PRINTING APPARATUS - A printing apparatus comprises a conveyance belt configured to convey a printing medium while attracting the printing medium to a conveyance surface thereof using an electrostatic force, a printhead configured to discharge a printing material onto the printing medium conveyed by the conveyance belt, a blade configured to scrape the printing material adhering on the conveyance belt; a support unit configured to bring the blade into press contact with the conveyance belt, and a recovery unit configured to recover the printing material which is scraped by the blade and free-falls, wherein a pressure applied from the blade to the conveyance belt decreases from one end to the other end in an orthogonal direction perpendicular to a conveyance direction of the printing medium on the conveyance surface of the conveyance belt.

07-29-2010

20100245445

PRINTING APPARATUS, PRINTING METHOD AND IMAGE PROCESSOR - A printing apparatus and a printing method are provided which, even if a print position misalignment occurs between a plurality of print scans during a multipass printing, can minimize density variations in a unit area reliably and stably, thus producing an image without density unevenness. For this purpose, multi-grayscale-level image data is converted into a plurality of dot arrangement patterns that determine individual subpixels either to be printed or not to be printed with a dot. Then, these dot arrangement patterns are printed overlappingly on a print medium in different print scans of the print head. At this time, the plurality of dot arrangement patterns are so arranged that, if these dot arrangement patterns are shifted from one another, a change in the dot-overlapping area ratio will be smaller than when the dots are arranged separately so that they do not overlap one another.

09-30-2010

20100245446

PRINTING APPARATUS AND PRINTING METHOD - In a 2M-pass printing operation that forms dots including overlapping dots, this invention makes an arrangement to ensure that the number of overlapping dots that are printed in a unit area in pairs of passes each straddling a print medium convey operation executed between an Mth pass and an (M+1)st pass is greater than the number of overlapping dots that are printed in pairs of passes straddling any other convey operation. This arrangement can cause two dots of the overlapping dots to be separated from each other in the event of a print position misalignment, preventing a possible density fall even in a unit area where the largest density reduction is feared to occur at time of the print position misalignment.

09-30-2010

20100245470

PRINTING APPARATUS AND PRINTING METHOD - To provide a printing apparatus and a printing method capable of not permitting a printable ratio of each printing scan to have a deviation and, even if a sudden conveyance shift occurs, outputting a uniform and smooth image in the whole area of the print medium. In order to achieve this, when performing multipass printing of 2M passes, a mask such that a printable area overlapping ratio that relates to straddling between Pass M and Pass M+1 is set higher than the printable area overlapping ratio that relates to straddling between other two consecutive passes is used. By this configuration, even if a complementary relationship of dots collapses due to a sudden conveyance shift etc. and thereby a density reduction is anticipated, by an overlapped dot being separated, increase of the density is accelerated, and it becomes possible to mitigate the above-mentioned density reduction.

09-30-2010

20110043838

IMAGE PROCESSING DEVICE AND IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD - When recording is performed in a pixel region by M (M is an integer equal to or larger than 2) passes with N (N is an integer equal to or larger than 2) recording element groups, density variation due to a deviation between recording positions of dots that are recorded by different passes is suppressed while a load of data processing is decreased.

02-24-2011

20110057980

PRINTING APPARATUS AND METHOD OF ACQUIRING CORRECTION VALUE OF CONVEYING ERROR - The sequence of the acquisition of a correction value of a conveying error depending on the eccentricity of the conveying roller (correction value for eccentricity) and the acquisition of a correction value of a conveying error depending on the outer diameter of the roller (correction value for outer diameter) is considered to acquire a precise correction value for outer diameter. A test pattern to acquire the correction values for eccentricity and for outer diameter is formed with an area exceeds the area corresponding to an integer multiple of the circumferential length of the roller. The correction value for eccentricity and that for outer diameter are acquired in this sequence. The fluctuation in the conveying error is reduced by the application of the correction value for eccentricity, and the influence of the excess area is made smaller before the correction value for outer diameter is acquired by averaging the conveying errors.

03-10-2011

20110069100

INK JET PRINTING APPARATUS AND PRINTING METHOD - By suppressing deviation of dot-formation positions stemming from insufficient accuracy in conveying a printing medium due to eccentricity of a conveying roller, a printed image in which unevenness is less visible is obtained. An accumulated amount of conveyance errors is decreased by narrowing a nozzle-use range and reducing a conveyance amount over an entire printing region according to a mode used for printing an image in which the coverage of a printing medium is low due to a small number of ink colors to be used, for example, a mode used for printing a monochrome image by using a black ink dominantly in all of the density regions.

03-24-2011

20110075174

IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD - The image processing apparatus executes quantization processing of second multi-valued image data that corresponds to a second relative movement of a plurality of relative movements based on first multi-valued image data that corresponds to a first relative movement of the plurality of relative movements, and executes quantization processing of the first multi-valued image data based on the second multi-valued image data. This makes it possible to output a high-quality image having excellent robustness and reduced graininess by controlling the overlap rate of dots that are printed by the first relative movement and the dots that are printed by the second relative movement.

03-31-2011

20110080615

IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD - The present invention suppresses data processing load and processing time when generating density data for the same color that corresponds to a plurality of printing scans (or plurality of printing element groups) of a printing head and printing medium. In order to accomplish this, input image data is converted to a plurality of density data by referencing a three-dimensional lookup table that performs one-to-one correlation of input image data with a plurality of density data that corresponds to a plurality of relative movements (or plurality of printing element groups). By doing so, it is possible to perform a process of generating density data (CMYK) that corresponds to a plurality of relative movements (or plurality of printing element groups) from input image data at once, and thus it is possible to suppress an increase in data processing load and processing time.

04-07-2011

20110090538

IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD - Multi-valued image data corresponding to a pixel area is divided into the first scanning multi-valued data, first and second scanning common multi-valued data, and second scanning multi-valued data. A quantization processing is executed on each of the multi-valued data to generate first scanning quantized data, first and second scanning common quantized data, and second scanning quantized data. After that, these pieces of quantized data are combined for each scanning to generate first scanning combined quantized data and second scanning combined quantized data. According to this, the amount of pixels where dots are both recorded by performing a scanning by plural times (the amount of overlapping dots) is controlled, and while suppressing the image density variations, the granularity is held to a low level.

04-21-2011

20110102813

MOVEMENT DETECTION APPARATUS, MOVEMENT DETECTION METHOD, AND RECORDING APPARATUS - A movement detection apparatus acquires a displacement direction and an amount of displacement of a template region in the first image data that is displaced in the second image data in a direction orthogonal to a direction of a movement of an object. Based on the acquired displacement direction and the amount of displacement, a position at which the template pattern is clipped in the direction is set.

05-05-2011

20110102816

MOVEMENT DETECTION APPARATUS AND RECORDING APPARATUS - A conveyance mechanism includes a conveyance belt having a detection pattern containing a plurality of isolated patterns. The shape of the plurality of isolated patterns contained in the detection pattern, the size of a template area from which a template pattern is to be extracted, and the size of a seek area are associated with each other so that a part of the detection pattern contained in the template pattern extracted from first image data invariably serves as a unique pattern in the seek area of second image data.

05-05-2011

20110116115

IMAGE PROCESSOR AND IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD - There are provided an image processing method and an image processor which realize the processing of restricting image degradations such as “dot delay”, “banding” and “wind ripple” with a simpler circuit construction. Therefore, after the regular quantization processing is performed, in a pixel in a prohibition position the processing of limiting a predetermined quantized value to change into another quantized value is performed corresponding to the obtained quantized value and the position information of the pixel of interest. By doing this, even in the low level of the density value, it is possible to realize at a low cost the construction in which dots having different sizes are mixed for printing.

05-19-2011

20110141213

INK JET RECORDING APPARATUS - An ink jet recording apparatus capable of landing an ink drop on an exact position on a recording medium is provided. An ink jet recording apparatus performs recording on a recording medium A which has been subjected to application processing with a pretreatment liquid. The ink jet recording apparatus has an electrostatic belt which has a resistance layer formed on the surface thereof, and a power feed roller which imparts charges to the surface of the electrostatic belt. The recording head discharges ink to the surface of the recording medium when the back of the recording medium comes into contact with the surface of the electrostatic belt to which the charges have been imparted.

06-16-2011

20110317177

IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS, IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD, AND RECORDING APPARATUS - An image processing apparatus includes a first generation unit configured to generate N pieces of same color multi-valued image data, a second generation unit configured to generate N pieces of quantized data by performing quantization processing on the N pieces of same color multi-valued image data, and a third generation unit configured to divide at least one piece of the N pieces of quantized data into a plurality of quantized data and generate M pieces of quantized data corresponding to the M relative movements. The M pieces of quantized data includes quantized data corresponding to an edge portion of the recording element group and quantized data corresponding to a central portion of the recording element group, and a recording duty of the quantized data corresponding to the edge portion is set lower than a recording duty of the quantized data corresponding to the central portion.

12-29-2011

20120206529

PRINTING APPARATUS AND METHOD OF ACQUIRING CORRECTION VALUE OF CONVEYING ERROR - While a conveying error of a roller depends on the eccentricity of the roller, the amount and the state of the eccentricity sometimes makes the roller have different conveying errors from one point in the longitudinal direction of the roller to another. There is provided a construction for obtaining a correction value that is suitable for the correction of the conveying error even in such a case as described above. To this end, plural test patterns are formed in the longitudinal direction of the roller. Then, a suitable correction value for correcting the conveying error that depends on the eccentricity of the roller is obtained on the basis of these test patterns.

08-16-2012

20120274949

INKJET PRINTING APPARATUS AND PRINT DATA GENERATING METHOD - An ink jet printing apparatus comprises a distributing unit configured to distribute print data for printing dot into data used for printing by first printing elements provided in a print head and data used for printing by second printing elements provided in the same print head, and a determining unit configured to, for the data used for printing by the respective parts of the printing element arrays of each of first and second print heads which have the overlapped print regions, determine a ratio between amount of the data used for printing by a combination of the first and second printing element arrays in the first print head and a combination of the first and second printing element arrays in the second print head.

11-01-2012

20120274951

INKJET PRINTING APPARATUS AND INKJET PRINTING METHOD - A large and small dot distribution pattern is generated, for each chip, according to a large and small dot distribution ratio and ejection failure nozzle information. In doing so, a bias of large and small dot distribution ratio at a nozzle position including an ejection failure nozzle is set to be smaller than that at a nozzle position that does not including an ejection failure nozzle. Then, dot data to be printed by the ejection failure nozzle is equally distributed to large dot nozzles that can eject normally and small dot nozzles. By such a configuration, even if a plurality of printing chips have different printing characteristics, ejection failure compensation processing is performed to minimize image degradation caused by an unexpected ejection failure and an average ejection volume of each of the chips converge on a fixed target ejection volume, which leads to reduction of density unevenness among the chips.

11-01-2012

20120287191

IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD AND IMAGE PROCESSOR - Provided are an inkjet printing apparatus and inkjet printing method that can, regardless of an ejection frequency of a print head, stabilize density of an image expressed on a print medium. For this purpose, an ink concentration integrated value is obtained according to the ejection history of each nozzle so as to be increased by data indicating non-ejection of the nozzle or decreased by data indicating ejection. Then, image data on the target pixel is corrected such that density of the target pixel is further reduced as the pixel is subjected to printing by a nozzle having a higher ink concentration integrated value.

11-15-2012

20120287193

PRINTING DEVICE AND PRINTING METHOD - A printing device using a print head ejecting ink from a plurality of nozzles to print ink dots of a plurality of dot diameters, includes a print-characteristic acquisition unit obtaining print characteristic information on dot diameters of ink dots to be printed per each predetermined portion of the plurality of nozzles, a distribution ratio determination unit determining a distribution ratio for distributing image data to the predetermined portions of the plurality of nozzles based on the information, a dot print position determination unit quantizing the image data to determine a dot print position based on the image data and sizes and an array of thresholds; and a plurality of masks based on dot distribution order determined according to the distribution ratio, distributing printing of each of the ink dots of the plurality of dot diameters to the dot print position determined by the dot print position determination unit.

11-15-2012

20120287194

IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD - Adequate correction processing is performed on image data based on the degree of ink concentration that occurs even. An image processing apparatus having: acquisition unit for acquiring multi-value image data and a first parameter related to the degree of concentration of ink; first generation unit for generating corrected data by correcting the multi-value data that is to be printed for the first pixel based on the multi-value data that is to printed in the first pixel and a first parameter; and second generation unit for generating the first parameter and a second parameter that indicates the degree of ink concentration of the plurality of nozzles when printing a second pixel that is printed by the nozzles next to the first pixel.

11-15-2012

20120287197

PRINTING APPARATUS AND THE METHOD OF ACQUIRING CORRECTION VALUE OF CONVEYING ERROR - While a conveying error of a roller depends on the eccentricity of the roller, the amount and the state of the eccentricity sometimes makes the roller have different conveying errors from one point in the longitudinal direction of the roller to another. There is provided a construction for obtaining a correction value that is suitable for the correction of the conveying error even in such a case as described above. To this end, plural test patterns are formed in the longitudinal direction of the roller. Then, a suitable correction value for correcting the conveying error that depends on the eccentricity of the roller is obtained on the basis of these test patterns.

11-15-2012

20130250364

IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD - An image processing apparatus for generating dot data to form an image by forming dots on a recording medium includes a receiving unit, a first, second, and third generating unit, and a correcting unit. The receiving unit receives first and second image data included in image data. The first generating unit generates, per the first image data, first ink color data representing a multi-valued signal value corresponding to an ink color. The second generating unit generates, per the second image data, second ink color data representing a multi-valued signal value corresponding to an ink color. The correcting unit corrects the signal value represented by the generated first and second ink color data. The third generating unit generates, per the first and second ink color data of which the signal values have been corrected, the dot data representing existence of formation of dots to form an image.

09-26-2013

20140104335

PRINTING APPARATUS AND PRINTING METHOD - A printing apparatus including a print head including nozzle groups each having nozzles, each of the nozzle groups applying ink having a plurality of volumes from the nozzles to form dots including dots differing in size, including: an arrangement determination unit to determine an arrangement of dots to be formed by each of the nozzle groups; a size determination unit to determine sizes of ink ejected to print the dots determined by the arrangement determination unit, according to respective ejection characteristics of the nozzle groups, such that a print characteristic of an image based on the dot arrangement determined by the arrangement determination unit is within a predetermined range; and an ejection control unit to control the print head to eject ink having the plurality of sizes determined by the size determination unit in positions of a print medium based on the arrangement determined by the arrangement determination unit.